


For the Bibliophile

by TwilightDeviant



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bookstore Disaster, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 14:12:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4525035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwilightDeviant/pseuds/TwilightDeviant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Asking for help getting a book off the top shelf should not end in a fistfight, a broken table, and jail time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For the Bibliophile

**Author's Note:**

> I started watching Hawaii Five-0 and just really love Steve and Danny's relationship. I've finished the show now, but I was inspired to write this when I was still back on season two. I usually have a rule about writing fics for something I'm not caught up with yet, but this is an AU so I'm willing to break that rule. It still plays.
> 
> Based off this tumblr prompt: "I asked for your help getting a book off the top shelf and you laughed at my taste and called me a nerd so I shoved you into a table of nonfiction best-sellers and that’s how we both got banned from the quirky community bookstore AU"

The concrete walls of the drunk tank were painted a bright salmon, offensive to the eyes, painful even. Danny was not drunk, though the man who kept falling asleep on his shoulder was— and in the middle of the afternoon no less. No, Danny was perfectly sober.

His placement in the oubliette of inebriation was due to his mutual and caustic attitude towards another of the arrestees. They had been purposefully separated for that hostility. Although near the end it had devolved from physical violence into shouting, and even his threats therein had turned mostly impotent.

The barred door opened. "Williams," called the guard.

Danny jumped up, leaving his drunken cellmate to fall asleep on the bench like a normal person. "Finally ready to believe I'm a cop?" he asked. "Gonna give me a little of that professional courtesy?"

"No," the man said, "but your partner came and vouched for you."

"Sure, yeah, whatever works."

Danny was in the middle of signing his name to liberate his personal effects when Kono slid in next to him, leaning against the counter.

"Thanks rookie," he said, dotting his 'I's with a petty stab. "I owe you. Now if you'd just take me to where I left my car, lunch'll be on me tomorrow, how's that?"

"Oh no," Kono said. "No, I think I'd rather have an explanation. Apparently there was a book?" she asked, trying to work through what fragmented pieces she had been told. "And a fistfight?"

"And a broken table," Danny said. "Yeah, it's all, uh, it's all itemized in the report."

He turned his head while speaking and Kono could see his dark eye with bruising all along the brow. She whistled low in remark to the injury. "Some shiner."

"Yeah, you should see the other guy." His name was Steve, and they would be seeing a lot of each other if the bookstore decided to press charges.

"I did actually," she said. "Good right hook."

"Thank you," Danny said, preening on the compliment. "Wait, you saw him? How did you see him?"

"He was leaving when I came in," Kono told him, "picking his personals up from the desk."

"He left before me?" Danny exclaimed. " _He_ left before _me_? How did he manage that?"

"I asked." Kono shrugged. "Knows the governor apparently."

"He knows the—" Danny stopped, halfway through a breath that got stuck in his chest. He coughed. "The governor of Hawaii? The big wig of this fiftieth united state?" She nodded. "God, I knew he was a tool. Governor's little lap dog."

"Yeah, I don't know how it is he knows her, but it's good enough to get sprung in a hurry."

"One wallet," the guard behind the caged screen said, drawing their attention, "one watch, and one phone."

Danny grabbed his belongings and stuck them in his pockets. He clasped his watch on his wrist and asked, "Can we go now?"

Kono dangled her keys from her hand. "You gonna tell me how you managed to get into a fight in a bookstore?"

He stared at the keys and huffed. No, he did not want to explain. It was, by all accounts, more than a little embarrassing. However, Kono, if no one else, did deserve the truth, as thanks for getting him out. "I couldn't..." He crossed his arms and looked to the high ceiling with a groan. "I could not reach the book on the top shelf. And since I've been looking everywhere for the stupid thing I thought— mistakenly!— to ask this... complete bastard for a little help. Guy took one look at it and started mocking me for my taste in literature. So," he dropped his arms, "I clocked him one."

"That's it?" she questioned.

"Well," Danny said, "there was a little back and forth, some shoving, some punches exchanged."

"A broken table apparently."

"Yes, the table, yes." He nodded. "In my defense though that thing was far, far from sturdy. I was saving them from a lawsuit. I'm a hero in all this."

"Uh-huh," Kono replied with a sarcastic grin. "And just what was the book about?"

"Hmm?"

"The book," she said, "the one you asked him to get, what was it?"

"Oh, that's," he shook his head, "yeah, that's not important."

"What was it?" she asked, deviously curious.

"Doesn't matter."

"What?"

"It's nothing."

"Come on, tell me. I'm not gonna let this go."

Danny dropped his eyes and sighed. She most likely would not. "It was a..." he mumbled his answer.

"What? Speak up, brah."

"It was," he loudly said before quieting again, "a princess book." Kono snorted, caught off guard by the answer. "It's for Grace!" he shouted.

That fact did not stop her. "You beat a guy up because he made fun of your princess book?" She continued to laugh.

"He didn't know it wasn't for me!" Danny yelled. "If I wanna read a book about a pretty princess, that guy has no right to criticize me, you hear? No right!"

Kono patted him on the shoulder. Her smile stretched wide from cheek to cheek. "C'mon," she said, "let's get your car."

—

Danny waved Kono off and sat in his hot car. He cranked the engine and let it run for a minute before leaving. He needed some cool, manufactured air blowing at him. The Hawaiian sun was brutal. He would argue with anybody that it was different from the one they had in New Jersey.

There was a knock on the passenger side window.

"No!" Danny shouted. Steve knocked again, deaf to his refusal. "No!" He knocked. "No!" He knocked. "I will put this car in gear and I will run you over in this parking lot, you psycho. Is that what you want?"

Steve pressed something against the glass. It was Danny's book.

"I don't want it!"

"Yeah, you do," Steve calmly said. "Unlock the door."

Danny sat in his car, fuming, ignoring the man outside while he thought. After a moment's dichotomy, which was in no way good for his blood pressure, he cracked the window, only an inch. "Your apology is, uh, begrudgingly accepted."

"'Begrudgingly'?"

"Yes, begrudgingly. Buy a dictionary, you animal. That is, of course, if you can find a bookstore that still accepts your patronage." He snapped his fingers at the man, telling him to, "Slide it through." The book banged against the door as Steve made a stubborn show of pretending it would not fit. "Turn it sideways," Danny irritably instructed.

Steve turned the book on its side, spine towards the ground with the cover still facing the glass. "Too big," he said.

"Sideways! The thin part!"

"Won't fit."

Danny hit his steering wheel with an open palm. "Sarcastic mother..." He rolled the window farther down, until the book would go in.

Steve stuck his whole arm through and unlocked the door.

"Whoa! What are you doing?!" Danny yelled.

"I'm sitting down," Steve said, acting all cute with his positively hilarious answers.

"You do not _sit_ in someone's car without their permission, you psycho."

"You used psycho already," Steve said.

"Yeah, but I'm still feeling it, so I'm gonna keep using it. How's that, huh?" He smiled but it was far from cheerful or amused.

"So, uh..." Steve trailed off. He looked like a man who had prepared everything he was going to say but lost the script once he was in the car with the door closed. He held the book out, but Danny did not feel like taking it directly from him. That was a peace treaty he was not yet ready to sign. Too fresh was his anger. Steve gave up and tossed it in his lap. "Your... book."

Danny held the steering wheel with both hands, looking ahead and paying no attention to the pink book sitting across his thighs. He thrummed his fingers along the wheel. "The book," he said slowly, giving information the man was not worthy of, "is for my daughter."

"Yeah, I know," Steve said.

"You know?" Danny yelled, glaring at him. "You know? Oh, that's freakin' perfect. That is so great that you know. He knew. So tell me something mister 'I know'. _Why_ do you go around berating hard working single fathers when 'you know', huh?"

"Because it was a _conversation_ ," Steve shouted back. "You ask me to get the book, I get the book. Then it's 'thanks' and 'you're welcome' and we're done. Only," he paused, running a hand over his mouth and propping it beneath his chin, "I didn't want it to be done, all right?" He took a deep breath, and when he spoke again it was at a normal volume. "So I made a joke about the book. It was _supposed_  to spark a conversation about your daughter."

"You insulted my book because you couldn't think of anything better to say?"

"Well, given the kinda short list of things I knew about you right off, I could have made a comment about your height instead."

"Oh my god, you're bringing my height into this," Danny raved. "I tell you what, that is the absolute last time I ask one of you tall giant bastards for a favor."

"Yeah, see, right there," Steve exclaimed, pointing at him. "You've got this short fuse thing going on. Only I didn't know that," he looked at his watch, "three hours ago."

"I do not have a short fuse!"

"You are yelling!"

"So are you!"

Steve opened his mouth to continue arguing but swallowed the words back down with force and strength of will. He slumped in his seat. They both stared ahead at the vacant parking lot.

Danny tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, pinky to index finger, working towards the center. It made a low, quiet thump, the only noise in the car.

He cleared his throat. "You are one awkward son of a bitch," he said. "Do you know that? Tell me you know that."

He looked over and saw Steve nod his head. "It's been brought to my attention before."

"Yeah?"

"Time or two."

"Twice, wow," Danny commented. "You must hang out with a lot of dishonest schmucks who don't wanna hurt your feelings."

Steve laughed at that. "Yeah, maybe," he said. "But you seem honest enough to make up for all that— brutally honest, if I'm being sincere here."

Danny grinned, tinting it with sarcasm. "That's me," he said, "Mister Honesty." He let his hands slip down the steering wheel and into his lap. They landed on the book. He tapped the cover awkwardly, unsure of what to say. "How'd you get it by the way, the book? I haven't been able to find this thing anywhere, and then the one place on the one island that did have it," he snapped his fingers, "banned, for life. For life? Is that not just the most over the top thing you've ever heard?"

"It's kind of extreme, I'll admit."

"The book," Danny pressed.

"Right, the book," Steve said, drawing out his reply. "Got it from the store."

"From the—" Danny looked at the innocently pink cover with suspicion. "Did you steal it? 'Cause I don't care how badly I want the stupid thing, I am not taking stolen merch."

"Relax," Steve smirked, amused by his honor. "I had my friend Chin go in and buy it."

"Your friend?" Danny questioned.

"Yes, he drove me back to my truck, same thing you got. But I asked him to go in and buy this for me first. He gave me," Steve laughed, "the most judgmental look I've ever seen, I swear."

"Yeah, he should've. You're a grown ass man buying princess books," Danny chuckled.

Steve smiled at him. One side pulled higher than the other, making it an endearingly crooked thing. His eyes turned bigger, kinder, and his head was tilted down so that he looked up through long, dark lashes. Okay, so he was attractive. A guy with a personality like that had to be or else someone would have strangled him by now.

Danny grabbed the book and tossed it in the backseat. "Thank... you," he said, and it was a hard task that he could never have completed without a firm tone and his unwavering focus on the gearshift. "I do not have any tangible cash on me now, but I will pay you back. Even if it means having to interact with you again, you psychotic ninja."

Steve shrugged. "Buy me something to eat and we're even."

"Why?" Danny demanded. "Why, why would I buy you food? Are you a hobo or something? What?"

"You can get yourself something too while we're there. It's your money."

"Oh my god," Danny realized. "It's a date. Holy—" He buried his head in his hands. "This is you trying to date me."

"Trying, yes."

"I have a black eye!" Danny shouted. "A black eye, Steve!"

"And I have a fairly nice bruise right here," Steve replied, gesturing at the swollen, purple line along his jaw. "And maybe a splinter from the table we broke."

"You do not hit someone that you intend on dating!" he yelled, hands swinging at every fourth word for emphasis. "That I even have to explain this is insane. It's insane."

"To be fair," Steve pointed out, "everything I did was in self-defense. I maintained a level composure as long as I could before instinct kicked in. But trust me, it could've been a lot worse."

"A lot worse?" Danny barked with laughter. "What are you, the governor's bodyguard?"

Steve's eyebrows rose, impressed that he knew so much so soon. "Navy SEAL actually," he corrected, "currently in the reserves, but the training's still there. I could've killed you."

"I'll take my chances in round two," Danny stated arrogantly. Truth be told, he probably had no chance against Steve's experience in a real fight, but he was not about to roll over and worship the man's fighting prowess either. He could hold his own. And the assertion that he could made Steve grin, warm and amused.

"How long you been on the island?" he asked, changing the subject completely.

"Almost eight months," Danny answered. "Eight horrible friggin' months in this sunlit hellhole. Why?"

"Well if you haven't picked up any regular haunts yet," Steve suggested, "I know a couple great places to eat."

"I'm sorry," Danny scoffed, "do you still think you're getting candlelight and spaghetti and sweet, sweet music? Buddy," he pointed at his face again and yelled, "I have a black eye!"

"Yes," Steve agreed, "you keep saying. And if we go out I'll let you tell me ten more times. How's that sound?"

It was a good thing the guy was attractive. It made breaking his nose sound like a sin. Best keep his pretty face as it was. Danny hated him. He hated him. And yet there was something. It was not some attraction he saw in spite of their bickering. It was because of it perhaps, that witty and sarcastic son of a bitch.

"When," he asked, building the words slowly, biting them off with gnashing teeth, "are you free?"

Steve puckered his lips with thought and then shrugged. "Now's good. I'm hungry. You hungry?" Without waiting for Danny's reply he buckled his seatbelt, ready to go. "There's a great place a couple blocks away. Been in business longer than I've been alive."

"What are you doing?" Danny snapped. "Just assuming I don't have plans. Do not assume that I do not have plans."

"I am so sorry. That was rude," Steve said. He rolled his head lazily along his neck, resting it on his shoulder and looking at Danny. "Are you busy? I mean," he continued, "I'm guessing not, what with you being a cop but not having your badge on you when you got arrested. Must be your day off. But personal plans, yeah, you probably missed those while we were in jail, right?"

"Keep it up, pal," Danny said, putting the car in drive. "I'll make you pay for yourself."

"Not very courteous," Steve said. "I thought this was payback for the book." He waved his hand, dismissing it. "But I'd be willing to let this great state of Hawaii pick up the tab."

"Now see that," Danny said, "that sounds like some sort of abuse of power."

"It's a business expense," Steve reasoned, "dinner with a proposition. I'd like to talk to you about my task force."

**Author's Note:**

> In which Steve and Chin have already started Five-0 and Danny and Kono will soon be joining.
> 
> That night Chin and Kono are having a laugh about how their respective bosses got in a fight with an absolute lunatic in a bookstore and... oh. Ohhhhhh.


End file.
